Beany and Cecil, Volume Two DVD

There is going to be a new DVD collection coming along this fall. The release of "Beany and Cecil, Volume Two" will happen on September 8th. This comes on the heels of a DVD collection from nearly 10 years ago.

In the early part of this decade there was a DVD released called "Beany and Cecil: The Special Edition" which consisted of a wide variety of Bob Clampett programs. Of course, 90% of the material was Beany and Cecil related...but a lot of the extra's dealt with other projects. In the previous collection the DVD consisted of 4 episodes of the live-action puppet show, Time For Beany, which ran for six years, 1949-1955. The puppet show ran locally, 1949-1950, but then started airing nationally later in 1950. The first volume DVD featured quite a few of the episodes of the animated version, simply called Beany and Cecil. In the animated version, the voice actors were slightly different than what viewers of the puppet show heard. In the puppet version, Daws Butler and Stan Freberg voiced the characters. In the animated version, which ran for one season of first-run episodes, but aired in reruns on the network for four more years, the voice actors for the animated version were Jim MacGeorge and Irv Shoemaker.

The cartoons usually had a sing-a-long/rhyme segment which lead up to the two characters singing together "...a Bob Clampett Cartoon" prior to the start of each episode. Beany's voice in the animated series lacked the cuteness, I think, that Daws Butler gave the character in the puppet version. The boy's voice in the cartoon is nothing like Butler's while Cecil and the villain, Dishonest John, sound somewhat close to the way Stan Freberg did the characters in the puppet version. Captain Huffenpuff, Beany's uncle, was the fourth major character. Daws voiced the puppet version while Jim MacGeorge voiced the animated version.

Much of the program's charm was the dialogue between all the characters...when the cartoon version began a lot of the charm lay in the pun's that Clampett was noted for. In one episode there was a reference to Dinah Shore as "Dina Saur" {Dinosaur, get it?}.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/time-for-beany-online-photo-archive.html

If you can't open that link, copy and paste it in your search box, click enter, and see if a link to the site comes up. If not, try Googling CartoonBrew and navigate their site until you come across the Beany and Cecil photo album. They have a fabulous pictorial up of both Stan Freberg and Daws Butler performing on the 1949-1955 puppet show. There's 10 pages of black and white pictures of the two! I saved quite a few of them.

In closing...

There were 26 half-hour productions that started to air in 1962. There were 78 segments...which means there were something like 3 segments per episode, of varying length, if my math is correct which it usually never is. So, these 78 segments/26 episodes aired consistently in reruns until 1967. The show remained in syndication on into the 1970's but eventually it left the airwaves. The cartoon and the puppet show have a cult following today and the DVD releases have been sparse. The first release that I wrote of earlier, "Beany and Cecil: The Special Edition", was the first DVD release of it's kind to focus on these characters with any degree of respect. Fast-forward a decade later, 2009, and we're about to have a second volume released to us. "Beany and Cecil, Volume Two"...

Tom and Jerry: Chuck Jones Collection

The Chuck Jones version of Tom and Jerry typically gets a bad wrap because of the different approaches to the characters. In addition to the physical differences from classic cartoons and the Chuck Jones version of the characters we also have the characters making more verbal noises than before. Tom was famous for doing that loud howling scream on occasion and Jerry sometimes would let out with a giggle at Tom's expense or utter a nervous laugh, or gulp, if he felt he was about to be pounced on by Tom. In this version, though, we hear a lot more gasps and yelps and whimpering...mostly from Tom but some from Jerry. We don't have that howl that Tom was noted for.

There are a couple of extra's on the DVD. There is a documentary called "Chuck Jones: Memories of a Childhood" and a featurette called "Tom and Jerry...and Chuck." I had not watched the documentary yet but I did watch the featurette and it's narrated by June Foray. It's about Chuck Jones and the last years at Warner Brothers and the time he spent at MGM doing the Tom and Jerry cartoons. The profile doesn't shy away from Chuck's personal feelings about limited animation but that's come to be expected. I happen to appreciate both styles. In one style you get full animation where you can see facial expressions and body movements and there might not even be any dialogue but you can tell what's happening from looking at the sequence and in the other you get emphasis on the vocals where you didn't necessarily understand what the characters were feeling if you turned the sound off.

As I've touched upon in other blog entries, Chuck is credited with coining the phrase "illustrated radio" to describe the style of animation Hanna-Barbera pioneered on TV. The series of episodes that Chuck did at MGM often pop up on Boomerang or Cartoon Network...mainly Boomerang. Some critics have said that Chuck took away the violence...I can see where the critics come to that conclusion but it had it's share of the good ol' cat and mouse chase where Tom hits Jerry with a fly swatter and Jerry's flattened on the floor...there's all kinds of sight-gag's and eye wiggles and gestures but because they were designed different and really weren't given a chance, the series usually leaves a bad taste in some viewer's and critics mouths. There's also a myth/rumor that some fans out there deliberately dismiss the Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons because of comments made by Chuck in later interviews that he didn't enjoy doing the series and found the 'cat and mouse' formula tiresome.

In the featurette it's pointed out that Chuck never liked to talk about the Tom and Jerry days in his later interviews and didn't like to bring the series up and as a result of this, I feel, younger animators who've looked up to Chuck automatically reject the series based solely on what Chuck's opinions were. I do come across web-sites out there that deal in cartoons and animation and most of the people/fans who cite Chuck Jones as their main director/animator from Warner Brothers tend to carry the same sentiments Chuck held. I don't know if they genuinely feel the way Chuck did about animation and all of that or if they're just going along with their hero. It's tough to tell...but I can tell you that this series is nowhere near as awful and terrible as critics and Chuck himself write it off to be.

There is no episode list on the DVD cover...you have to insert the DVD in your player and then look up the episodes from the main menu. It's a nuisance having to do that. They do list the extra features on the back of the DVD. There were only 34 theatrical shorts made of the characters under Chuck Jones...and all 34 of them are presented on two DVD's. All of the characteristics Chuck brought to the Looney Tunes characters are on full display in his version of Tom and Jerry. Chuck wanted to evoke life, which is at the heart of animation, into the characters he worked on and he succeeded.

Casey Kasem: 39 years of countdowns

Casey Kasem began his weekly music countdown program on July 4, 1970. American Top-40 became one of the highest rated syndicated programs on radio...in fact, it became the highest rated. Casey and his associates also created the American Country Countdown which featured the same formula as the pop/rock counterpart. The idea of the show was to spotlight the hit singles of the previous week from #40 to #1. The countdown began at #40 and there would usually be 8 or 9 songs within an hour's time frame when you factor in song length and commercial breaks. A 40 song countdown would run at least 4 hours because of this pattern.

American Top-40 had it's share of features, too. There was the long-distance dedication which listeners would write the countdown letter's, usually of the Dear Abby variety of a former lover wanting to send a song to someone in their past; Casey always opened the segment saying "Dear Casey..." and he read the requests, using vocal dramatics at times if the letter was sad or depressing. If the dedication was read over the airwaves Casey would play the requested song. Another feature of the show as the countdown got closer to the Top-10 or to #1 was the recurring practice of the "AT40 extra" which was a song that had been a hit in the past by an artist still on the chart, typically preceding or following the current hit by the artist. Another feature was the radio station credit where Casey would name off some of the radio stations that aired the countdown. In the internet age, this feature was expanded to something like: "AT40 is heard from coast to coast and around the world on great radio stations like..." and he'd start naming off the stations. Once the countdown had reached the #2 spot, after the runner-up song was over, Casey would tease the listeners by saying something like "before we see who's #1 this week, let's hear the song that was #1 five years ago...". Also, Casey would name off the #1 songs on the other weekly charts, too, once the countdown grew closer to #1.

Casey remained the host of American Top-40 for 18 years, 1970-1988. In this time he had become a TV star as well. His weekly syndicated program, America's Top-10, would countdown the Top-10 singles of the week in a variety of music formats and play music video's, which was something new at the time. The series was in production for over 10 years. It was a half-hour show.

Casey was also a prominent voice actor for Hanna-Barbera. He gave voice to three popular cartoon characters: Robin on the various Superfriends cartoons of the '70s and '80s; Casey, in fact, voiced Robin in the late '60s cartoon series of The Adventures of Batman. Casey became the voice of Shaggy on countless Scooby-Doo projects. Lastly, Casey gave voice to Alexander Cabbot in Josie and the Pussycats. Casey, as far as I know, isn't putting an end to his voice-over career...just the countdown program.

After Casey left AT40, as it's commonly referred to, he created Casey's Top-40 which competed with AT40. Casey's program was using the chart data from Radio and Records. The AT40 data was supplied by Billboard magazine. Casey also started two more countdown programs: Casey's Countdown which counted down the Top-20 Adult-Contemporary songs of the week and Casey's Hot 20 which counted down the Top-20 Hot Adult-Contemporary songs of the week. The countdown's were 3 hours in length...a lot of features and extra songs were played to fill out a countdown that would actually be 2 hours since each show counted down 20 songs.

AT40 was taken over by Shadoe Stevens...he hosted the program from 1989 until 1995. Casey's countdown shows were higher rated than the program he had hosted for 18 years and so AT40 ended in 1995 after a 25 year run. In the meantime, Casey had put an end to his syndicated TV series. On Nick-at-Nite he became famous for the annual New Year's Eve program, The Rerun Countdown. On this show he counted down the top 25 reruns of the year determined by viewers. He presided over this program for 9 years and it kicked off at noon on New Year's Eve and because the TV shows were half an hour in length, the program ran for 12 and a half hours. The #1 rerun of the year was announced around midnight and the airing of the #1 rerun brought in the new year...the show would wrap up typically around 12:30am New Year's Day. I was a child of the '80s and a teenager in the '90s and I was hooked on Nick-at-Nite and loved watching the older TV shows and so on New Year's Eve, for me anyway, it was watching Casey's rerun countdown. Casey was no stranger to marathon's, though. He has appeared for years on the annual Jerry Lewis MDA telethon as one of the recurring co-hosts and he often provides voice-over's for a lot of the video footage that gets spotlighted.

In 1998 AT40 was re-launched and Casey was back as the host. His two other countdown programs were re-titled American Top-20 and American Top-10. The Top-10 show was a revamped edition of the Hot Adult-Contemporary Top-20 countdown, previously known as Casey's Hot 20. The AT10 show ran 2 hours. The AT20 show ran 3 hours as usual, counting down the Adult-Contemporary songs.

In 2004, Casey stepped down as host of AT40...replaced by Ryan Seacrest. Casey continued to host his other two countdown programs. A syndicated series called AT40 Flashback started airing on satellite radio in 2006 and then the show started airing on mainstream Top-40 radio stations in 2007. The program is 3 hours and it presents a vintage Top-40 episode from the '70s or the '80s. The reason it isn't 4 hours is because a lot of the original commercials are edited out. In some broadcasts of the Flashback show you'll hear Casey lead up to a commercial but then the program resumes after a brief second or two of silence. This makes the show seem to move along quicker when you cut out the commercials and station identifications. Although Casey does provide station ID's for the stations airing the Flashback show. He typically says: "you found it, AT40 Flashback..." and he names the radio station.

The weekend of July 4, 2009 proved to be a shocker...Casey, without prior warning, announced that it would be his final time counting down the songs...bringing a close to an exact run of 39 years of counting down the hits. I assume the secrecy was because he didn't want a big fuss or farewell made because he's still going to be busy with other projects and it isn't like he's retiring from working. I'm sure he'll still be providing the voice of Shaggy in whatever new Scooby-Doo program that comes along, though. In a statement he commented that he wanted to focus on a myriad of other projects but he said he loved every minute of doing the countdown program's.